


torch song

by flutter_bi



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, Multi, a little bit of blood and gore, sorry I wasn't expecting that
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-24 00:16:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4897813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flutter_bi/pseuds/flutter_bi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are bruises covering her face and arms. His men prepared him for this. She’d fought, longer and harder than expected.</p><p>“You think I'm not a goddess?<br/>Try me.<br/>This is a torch song.<br/>Touch me and you'll burn.”<br/>― Margaret Atwood, <i>Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Prompts**  
>  Chapter 1, Prompt #63: President Davis & Charlie, “I’m glad to finally make your acquaintance, Miss Matheson.”  
> Chapter 2, Prompt #39: Charlie & Everyone, “The President is waiting to see you.”  
> Chapter 3, Prompt #113: Charlie/Bass/Shelley, Touch the fingers of my hand and tell me if it’s me.

There are bruises covering her face and arms. His men prepared him for this. She’d fought, longer and harder than expected.

To start, they had her feet and hands shackled in front of her, but she’d picked the lock within a half hour and broke the collarbone of one of the recruits. After that, they put her arms behind her and crossed her legs to shackle them, so if she tried to get up she’d trip. Her answer to that was to plant her teeth in the throat of the man offering her water. That was when they decided that making a distinction between a male and female enemy combatant was stupid and they chained her, face down with her hands behind her back and her legs shackled and crossed at the ankles, to the bench she’d been sitting on.

After that, his men told him, she just struggled and cursed at them.

And now here she was, Charlotte Matheson, daughter of Rachel and Ben Matheson, niece of Miles Matheson. A part of him felt like he’d already won the war now that he had her. All of the intel his men provided suggested that she was the glue holding the resistance together. With any luck, now they’d fall apart. Slow or fast, it didn’t matter to him, as long as they were cut down at the source.

President Davis smiled for the first time in a very long time. “I’m glad to finally make your acquaintance, Miss Matheson.”

The girl looked across the desk at him, raised an eyebrow and said, “I’m sure you wish I could say the feeling is mutual, but I think we both know it’s not. What am I doing here?” 

Defiant to the last. Well, they'd fix that.

He kept his voice as calm and even as possible, as if he was dealing with a wild animal and not a girl who hadn’t yet seen her twenty-fifth birthday. “As I said, I wanted to meet you. Can you blame me? You’re skill at killing my men is bested only by your uncle and Sebastian Monroe. That’s no easy feat, especially for a woman.”

“Because women are the weaker sex?” Her eyebrows shot up and he could see she was offended. Good. Angry and emotional he could work with; it was the methodical clockwork ticking in her brain that he worried over. If she was anything like her mother and father, then she had to be at least twice as smart as she looked and he did not want to be on the business end of that brain. Not now. Not when he was so close. 

“Not weaker.” He inclined his head as if he was giving her an inch, just an inch, by admitting it. “Just different.”

He made no bones about how he felt about women’s place in his war. He preferred not to use them, and not only because he believed them to be better caretakers than soldiers. The training never worked as well on the girls. He’d theorized that it was because they were too emotional to be trusted, others suggested it was because they held on too tight to the life they had before. _It was just harder to make them forget._

The scientists didn’t give much credence to either of those theories. They kept bringing up issues with hormones he'd only barely ever heard of, like androgens, estrogens, and progestogens, and how to get the balance of drugs and physical exertion just right for the girls after they’d developed it for young men.

Regardless, one way or another - starving, beatings, stray shards of broken glass to their wrists - the girls always died before they could complete the training. He hadn’t seen a female recruit survive to the end of the full regimen, but something about Charlotte Matheson made him want to try.

If he could not only control her but also turn her and remake her in his own image, well that would be proof that he’d been on the right track all along. Wouldn’t it? She was his own personal metaphor for what society had become before the Blackout, and if he could root out her defiance and channel into something good for the new United States of America, well, all the better.

It would take time, he knew, but it seemed time was finally on his side.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fate was finally on their side. Two years of slogging through mud, muck, and blood and they were standing at the finish line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so like my other fic, the end of this is a little rushed. But, again, we got where we were supposed to go and the payoff (see: smut) is coming. 
> 
> **Prompts**  
>  Chapter 1, Prompt #63: President Davis & Charlie, “I’m glad to finally make your acquaintance, Miss Matheson.”  
> Chapter 2, Prompt #39: Charlie & Everyone, “The President is waiting to see you.”  
> Chapter 3, Prompt #113: Charlie/Bass/Shelley, Touch the fingers of my hand and tell me if it’s me.

Fate was finally on their side. Two years of slogging through mud, muck, and blood and they were standing at the finish line.

Rachel took a final, considered look at her accomplices. So much had changed since they lost Charlie. In the beginning, she thought it would tear her and Miles apart, but it hadn’t. Instead they ended up on even ground for once. Not together, neither of them could bear the thought of being a family without her, but at least on the same side and not hating each other for it.

Afterwards...after she told him the truth, that Charlie was his child and not Ben’s, Miles just grunted and chuckled. She expected yelling and recriminations, but instead he laughed and cried a little and told her that Ben was Charlie’s father and he was a damn good one. And that was the end of it.

He hadn’t stopped drinking, but he drank...less. And he hoped. Sometimes she thought he was the only one who still held out hope that their daughter was alive. She didn’t have much and, if it was possible, Bass and Aaron had even less.

It was surprising how close the two of them had become in the aftermath of losing Charlie. She never would have put them together, but with Connor missing and Priscilla being more gone than there since her encounter with the nano, the two of them formed some sort of weird bond.

They talked about Charlie. A lot. More than she could bear and more than Miles wanted to (he saw no point in reminiscing about someone who he still believed was alive). And they drank. As a matter of fact, for every shot Miles didn’t drink, Aaron took at least two. She kept expecting him to give up, but he soldiered on, determined to see this through to the end. Determined to get vengeance for at least one person he cared about.

At first she’d worried over how much time he was spending with Bass, but the closer they got to the end of this, the more she realized that Monroe’s shades of grey way of seeing the world was probably best for all of them right now. If they didn’t pretend that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel, then their hearts couldn’t be broken and left to rot in the dark.

Rachel had been to the White House once, before the Blackout, before the world went to shit because of something she’d done.

She’d been uncomfortably shuffled from one room to another the first time; they were careful to keep her and the rest of the team away from the watchful eye of the press. Everything was different now though; they marched her, Miles, Bass, and Aaron through the front gate and across the lawn for everyone to see.

It was ironic really, _now_ they were considered traitors to their country – not when they were building the device that would end the world or indiscriminately killing citizens of other sovereign nations. No. Now that they were trying save lives, they were the bad guys.

Funny how flipping one switch could turn the world on its axis. She could feel a small smile forming on her lips and Bass and Miles looked at her out of the corner of their eyes. They were worried, she knew. Worried she would crack up, as Bass so tactfully put it when they started out on this mission, before they could see it through to the end. But she wasn’t going to. Like Aaron, she had one goal in mind: revenge for the child she always left behind. And she was finally about to get it.

The group was ushered to the front doors of the oval office where a young recruit stood guard. To her way of thinking, he was probably too young to be guarding this so-called president, but she knew from firsthand experience that the younger recruits were almost always more deadly. The first ten or so times she watched Bass or Miles kill teenage boys she railed against them and had to be calmed by Aaron. Now she just stored up all her anger for when she was finally face to face with Jack Davis.

The plan, as she knew it, was supposed to go like this: get captured, get taken to the President, and get ready for all hell to break loose. For reasons she didn’t understand, reasons they were trusting their contact to come through on, getting caught was supposed to initiate a series of dominoes falling that would end with the trigger man coming into the oval office, unguarded, and killing the President. They knew it had to be someone who was a close advisor, and also kept out of the public eye.

In the beginning none of them had been all the interested in turning themselves over to the man who wanted them dead, but six months of correspondence back and forth convinced Miles that this was the only way, and Miles convinced everyone else.

And now here they were.

“The president is waiting to see you.” The young boy’s doughy face and bright green eyes barely changed expression as he opened the doors and ushered them through.

* * *

 

Jack Davis stood behind his desk with guards flanking him on both sides and two more lined up at each exit to the room - eight guards total, killers all.

Miles figured, if it came to it, he and Bass could take most of them down. Aaron was getting better at fighting and he could probably get a few, and Rachel was a pretty good killer in a pinch. The trick would be killing Davis before he made it to any of the exits or before more guards came rushing in. That was Plan B, of course, Plan A involved killing Davis while losing as few of their own as possible. He was willing to admit that plan was a complete longshot.

When Blanchard had sent him the first note he’d read it quickly and discarded it almost as fast, but as more time passed and more notes came he started to see something in the writing, in the words between the words. It was impossible, he knew Charlie was gone even if he wasn’t willing to admit it to Rachel or Bass, but still. Still.

Maybe this was her way of speaking to him from the grave—maybe her last gift to him would be the head of her murderer on a platter.

“…so you can understand why this is an important moment for me.”

Davis was talking. Miles wasn’t sure how long the man had been droning on, but he did know if he had to suffer through it much longer he’d just say fuck the plan and put a bullet in his head. He turned to Bass and could see from the look on his friend’s face that he was following the same line of thinking.

_God. When they had power had they ever been so insufferable?_

“But really, that’s not the most important thing.” Miles finally tuned back into the conversation and focused his attention on Davis (at least for the time being). “The most important thing is that you know I’ve beaten you wholly and completely. That I’ve taken your meager resistance and completely shattered it, and rebuilt it in my own image.”

_The fuck was he talking about?_

“Tommy,” the man gestured to the kid who’d ushered them into the oval office. “Please go get my daughter. I’d like her to be here for this.”

Miles turned to Rachel and they shared a wary look. The person he called into the office was supposed to be their contact, but there was no way in hell the man’s own daughter had turned on him.

Was there?

* * *

 

God, she was still beautiful. Her hair was darker and she held herself differently, walked differently, but those blue eyes…nothing could be done to change or hide them.

Bass heard Rachel gasp next to him and out of the corner of his eye he saw Miles reach out for her and pull her back to keep her from rushing the woman. For a moment he wondered who was going to do the same for him and then Stay Puft spoke, his voice cracking as if he hadn’t uttered a word in years, “Charlie.”

She walked over to desk and stood behind Davis, her hand on was on his shoulder, but Bass could see that her eyes were focused on them. On those she’s left behind. “Hello Aaron. It’s good to see you again.”

Davis reached up and took Charlie’s hand in his own, kissed her knuckle in a way that didn’t quite feel fatherly and made him wanted to rip the man’s throat out with his teeth, but it was Miles who said, through clinched teeth, “Don’t touch her.”

“She’s mine,” Davis responded, “and I can do with her as I please.”

“Like hell you can.” Miles answered.

Charlie looked almost serene as she watched the two men argue back and forth, and Bass couldn’t take his eyes off of her. Her shoulders were back and she tried to stare through him instead of at him, but she wasn’t robot like the rest of the recruits. No, some part of her was still in there and he could see more than just happiness to see them shinning back at him, there was humor there. She was going to enjoy what happened next.

“Father,” her voice was slightly louder than a whisper as she leaned down to speak to the man who called himself President of the United States. “Don’t you think it’s time?”

Davis nodded and with the flick of his wrist all but two of his guards left the room. The boy with the doughy face was the last to go, but that left a young woman he hadn’t paid much attention to before to his right and a man who stood taller than all of them and looked like he could probably take a bulldozer in a fight to his left. All things considered, he liked their odds a lot more now than he had before.

Davis clearly disagreed.  “I want you to understand that the three people left in this room are my most trusted guards. Marcus has been with me since Cuba and I’ve seen him take out a group of nearly fifteen men without breaking a sweat, and Amara was Charlotte’s first successful recruit. She’s faster and much more deadly than she looks. Do not test me or them.”

“Fantastic,” Bass shifted his attention from Charlie to Davis. “Why the hell are we here?”

“To debrief, of course. I can’t have you all going to your graves without knowing exactly how and when I brought you down. That would just be cruel.”

Charlie’s smile was sickeningly sweet as she looked at him and her eyes were finally the kind of flat she’d been playing at before. A knife appeared at her side – and he had no idea where she’d hidden it under that skintight white dress – and she brought it to Jack Davis’ throat and shoved it in. The man clutched at the wound and blood spurted out and covered the desk before she reached over him and snapped his neck for good measure.

She wiped her hands down the front of her dress and then looked to the two guards in the room, “Get to work.”

The man and woman moved as one, locking all of the doors and removing the carpets and furniture from the middle of the room.

It was, of all people, Aaron who found his voice first. “Charlie, what is happening?”

“Exactly what I told you all would happen in my letters. We’ve finally taken down Jack Davis. Now we need to get the hell out of here.”

She walked around the desk and on the count of five pulled at a door in the floor with her two friends. Once opened, the door led to a tunnel beneath the oval office. “This has been here for years, but the entrance was buried. To excavate it, Jack had to pull up almost two feet of flooring. Good thing for us he’s a both paranoid and obsessed with bringing this country back to what he thought was its former glory.”

The bulldozer-sized man carefully motioned Rachel forward and she stopped momentarily to rest her hand on Charlie’s face before rushing down into the tunnel. Aaron followed behind her and he gave Charlie a hug and a kiss on the check before taking his leave, the girl followed behind him and that left only Charlie, Bass, and Miles in the room.

“We need to go,” she said. “There will be time to talk later.”

Miles nodded and took her in his arms, he held her for a moment and whispered in her ear. Bass couldn’t hear what he was saying, but whatever it was had tears streaming down her face as she clutched at the back of Mile’s shirt and nodded into his neck. Miles shot Bass final look as he headed down the stairs.

Charlie looked up a Bass, tears still shinning in her eyes, blood on her white dress, and her hands shaking. “We really do have to go.”

He nodded and let his fingers graze over her lips and across her cheeks until his hands were locked in her hair and their foreheads were touching. They stood silently for a moment, breathing the same air and letting the word around them falling away. “You’re alive.”

“Mostly.” She gestured to the door. “I have to be the last to go through, there’s a lever that seals it and no one else knows where it comes out.”

Bass nodded and pulled away. “We’ll talk later?”

She smiled. “Of course.”  

 


End file.
